The Issue

GENDERCIDE is the GENOCIDE of a specific gender group—that is, the mass killing of girls and women.

Today, in India, girls and women are discriminated against and murdered, just because they are female. More girls and women have been discriminated against and killed in the past century than any other modern-day genocide.

For every 1000 boys in India,there are only 914 girls

= 10. (2011 Indian Census)

50million girls and women are missing from India’s population, due to gendercide

(United Nations)

1 in 4 girls in India does not live past puberty

(It's a Girl Movie)

47%of girls in India marry before the age of 18

(UNICEF)

1 in 5 women is a victim of rape or attempted rape in her lifetime

(U.N. Development Fund for Women)

Feticide

In India, sex-selective abortion (feticide or foeticide) is illegal. Indian laws are in place to save lives of unborn girls who are being discriminated against, just because they are girls. But because the laws are not enforced as they should be, it is estimated that 700,000 girls are aborted every year. On average, one girl is aborted in India, every minute, just because she is a girl. #VanishingGirls

Infanticide

Discrimination against girls continues once they are born. Infanticide (the murder of a baby girl) is another form of deadly gender bias that exists today. Women are pressured by their families to “produce” sons. When a daughter is born, family members may kill the baby girl, just because she is a girl. And, the practices used to kill these baby girls are unthinkable. Infanticide is so widely practiced, that little girls in India are 75% more likely to die than little boys. #SaveGirls

Trafficking

India’s massive gender gap has resulted in human trafficking. The 2013 US Department of State Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report stated that girls in India are “being sold or coerced into forced marriages in states with low female-to-male gender ratios . . . some of whom are subsequently forced into prostitution . . .”

Sex trafficking is a consequence of India’s gender imbalance. When millions of men go unmarried because millions of potential brides have been killed, men are more inclined to purchase sex. Young girls are forced to service sometimes up to 20 men a day in dirty brothels, far from home.

Girls are also trafficked into villages to become brides for men who have no women to marry. And, when children are forced to marry, the results are devastating--high maternal mortality rates; high infant mortality rates; and increased likelihoods of domestic violence and HIV for the brides. In addition, these girls are no longer educated. #EndGendercide

Violence

Violence against girls and women is a consequence of India’s skewed sex ratio. In December 2012, a female New-Delhi student was gang-raped on a bus and later died. Such violence against women “occurs more frequently in areas where men outnumber women,” and is a byproduct of gendercide. Where young girls’ lives do not matter, females as a whole are devalued.

Another form of brutality is the dowry death of a bride because the dowry (although illegal) her family paid is perceived as inadequate. India’s National Crime Records Bureau stated that 8,233 women were murdered in India in 2012 due to dowry disputes. That is the equivalent of one woman being murdered every hour. #SaveGirls

Gender Discrimination Fuels Sex Selective Abortion: The Impact of the Indian Supreme Court on the Implementation and Enforcement of the PNDT Act, INTERNATIONAL & COMPARATIVE LAW REVIEW, Vol. 15 (Fall) 2007.

Read Invisible Girl Project’s Testimony before the US Congress on “India’s Missing Girls.”